Layers of Home

With Guanyu Xu

Ages 17+

In English

What makes a place feel like home? How do photographs preserve, reshape or complicate our sense of belonging?

As Guanyu Xu guides you through his work Resident Aliens, look closely at how photography, collage and personal archives can reflect memory and identity. Xu’s layered photographic installations bring together domestic spaces and family photographs to examine migration, intimacy and the shifting meanings of home.

After the tour, create your own layered collages. Working with photographs of your home—whether current, former or imagined—as well as printed images, found materials and fragments of text, experiment with cutting and recomposing images to construct new visual narratives. Shine a light on your own relationships to place, memory and belonging.

Throughout the workshop, you will engage in conversations about personal histories, the spaces we inhabit and the ways photographs become vessels for memory and identity. As you move between discussion and making, consider how images can hold multiple places, times and experiences simultaneously, creating new connections between the personal and the collective.

Designed for photographers, artists and creatives at all levels, this session is free and materials are provided. Please bring a selection of printed photographs of your home or personal spaces to use during the workshop.

Sharjah Art Foundation is committed to making its programmes inclusive and accessible. You can arrange for any support needed through the registration form.

For more information, email learning@sharjahart.org, or call (06) 568 8800.